Drowned City

Drowned City
Ruth Jenkins

You've moved to the roof where the pigeons live.
Steal paper bags of grain,
bread, cigarettes.
In the rainy evenings
you write:
'I like them because they are dirty,
failed doves.'
(From my slanted window,
rain slipped up and up.
You said. What would we be
if the birds weren’t here
how would we know
our size against the sky.
Our old city was drowned.
All paths mud, all
childhood houses sunk.
How small it was.
Us in our opposite rooms.
Tapping messages into
our cardboard wall at night.)
*
(They say these birds remember.
Bodies mutate but the longing remains.
Rooftops dreams of cliffs and tide.
Sea breathes through the hurl of the roads below.)
I live in the oldest quarter.
Built a wall
and the water didn’t reach us.
You in the new city
(Fishes disguised as women
stroll along the streets.)
You write:
'I've burnt the photographs
where we were beautiful.
The softness a question.
Do you remember
becoming weightless
the moment
the heft of your body torn from you.
Do you remember
running into the street
its song of metal & light
feet clean against asphalt
saying hello
I'm here.
I'm still here.'
Years go by and you do not write.
I watch flash floods and angry wave gods
pray for my sons each afternoon,
come home.
Stumble through too large rooms,
think you drowned.
*
(Sea salt fizzes
into concrete, brick and glass.
Pigeons carry messages in their beaks:
Books of strange alphabets, rotting meat.
Letters from the front, each word blacked out.)
*
A bird arrives with a letter in its beak.
Childish scrawl, green-inked
You write:
Five years to learn
my new lightness,
to stitch stray feathers
to my smoke body
with the simplest of threads.
Five years to learn
the earth's pull,
to unpick
rooftops with my beak.
This will be my last letter.
How do you stay
knowing what know?
I have sent a bird for your reply.
I inspect the creature,
torn grey feathers, ugly jutting beak.
In cities shopkeepers leave trails-
rice to swell the bodies.
I have never been cruel.
I keep it in the shed
with the oiled instruments and seeds
Bolt the door for foxes.
*
(We unpick the old house with our beaks,
Carry it between us on a trapezoid system of strings.
Rest on water when our wings fail.
The sea seeps in everywhere.
Salt tangles our veins
dirties our eyes
You will find me gone
with no trace of blood or feathers,
years afterwards you
will say I was a dove
all along, like the bird
in your books
who brought back the news
the water is abating
from the earth's face
who flew out
and did not return again)

Ruth Jenkins lives in London and writes speculative poetry and interactive fiction on cities, coding and magic. Ruth’s writing has previously appeared in Strange Horizons, Stone Telling, and Verse Kraken.